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Lars Bang Larsen
e-flux journal #26 Ñ june 2011 Ê Lars Bang Larsen
Giraffe and Anti-Giraffe: Charles FourierÕs Artistic Thinking
Giraffe and
Anti-Giraffe:
Charles
FourierÕs
Artistic
Thinking
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1. After the War
The writings of Charles Fourier (1772Ð1837) are a
glorious fuck you to all that exists. Yet they are
neither punkÕs provocation nor the apodictic
objectivity of Marxian dialectics, but an enculage
of civilization through the filigree work of total
world reinvention.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMarx complained that FourierÕs utopia was
all in his mind, that he was obliged to construct a
new society Òwith elements supplied by his
brainÓ because capitalist production was
underdeveloped when he wrote.1 But it is
perhaps this appeal to reason rather than history
that makes FourierÕs imagination so radical. Even
today, it has not been bought and sold: there is
still nothing that surpasses FourierÕs projected
state of absolute Harmony.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFor AndrŽ Breton, who claimed Fourier for
Surrealism in his poem Ode ‡ Charles Fourier
(1947), only minds as febrile and immoral as
FourierÕs could possess the Òextreme freshnessÓ
necessary to re-imagine the world in the
aftermath of destruction: ÒFourier theyÕve
scoffed but one day theyÕll have to try your
remedy whether they like it or not ÉÓ2 Breton was
the first to consult Fourier after World War II,
echoing the time when Fourier himself was
writing in the early nineteenth century, in a
Europe that had similarly collapsed in wars.
There was not much available in his historical
present that one could appeal to.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAccording to Fourier, the world is cosmically
out of whack. He blamed the arrogance of the
philosophers and the charlatanism of priests for
having systematically repressed the passions,
leaving humankind stuck in an incoherent
civilized state for 2300 years. Faced with this
universal misery, Fourier heralds the triumphant
reign of a Harmonian cosmic order based in his
science of Passional Attraction Ð the primordial,
ubiquitous force that connects the whole in
social series.3 According to this order,
government must be based on a consultation of
the passions since they essentially characterize
the human being and its community. Conversely,
a repression of the passions will result in
hypocritical social institutions like marriage and
the nuclear family, from which Fourier argued
that women must be freed Ð and in fact, Fourier
took the proto-feminist view that the measure of
happiness was the degree of independence of
women in society.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn Harmony, communal living will be the
order of the day and will be organized in microsocieties called Phalansteries, founded on
collective sensuousness and industry. According
to FourierÕs group theory, each Phalanstery
would be populated by 1620 people Ð one male
and one female for each of the 810
temperaments Fourier recognized. This
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Laurent Pelletier, The dreamt Phalanst•re of Charles Fourier, 1868. Watercolor on paper.
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This is always to be understood, even when
I do no mention it. For instance, if I say as a
general thesis, civilised man is very
miserable, this means that seven-eights, or
eight-ninths of them are reduced to a state
of misery and privation, and that only oneeighth escapes the general misfortune and
enjoys a lot that can be envied.6
This margin of error can perhaps also be applied
to FourierÕs own brand of radical Enlightenment
thinking: if he argues in favor of the
emancipation of slaves and women, his antiSemitism, his prejudiced view of the Chinese,
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e-flux journal #26 Ñ june 2011 Ê Lars Bang Larsen
Giraffe and Anti-Giraffe: Charles FourierÕs Artistic Thinking
combination would enable infinite social,
aesthetic, and sexual encounters, through which
humankind would regain its equilibrium. It is
Òschlaraffisch eingerichtetÓ (Benjamin;
Òfurnished like an El DoradoÓ), and even
pleasures Ð hunting, fishing, gardening, playing
music and theatre, staging operas Ð are to be
rewarded. The children organize themselves in
Little Hordes where they raise each other and
contribute to the everyday life of the Phalanstery.
The social series of temperaments, generations,
and divisions of labor describe subgroups and
passionate inclinations that work in complex
ways across the collectivity, resulting in a
communal euphoria, a constant social high. In
FourierÕs famous phrase, Òthe passions are
proportional to the destinies.Ó Forget about
genital love: society is erogenous, and FourierÕs
scorn for the doubt of the Cartesian subject is
endless.4
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHarmony will bring about vast
improvements, genetically and socially. In
keeping with the redemption of its Harmonian
birthright, humankind will mutate and over nine
generations will reach an average height of seven
feet and a life expectancy of 144 years. There will
be plenitude on all levels. The EarthÕs original five
moons will be restored and its polar tilt
corrected, and the oceans will have lemonade
flavoring as the poles become ice-free by 1828.
Constantinople is set to be the world capital and
planet Earth will be crowned by a permanent
aurora borealis. Fourier, a theoretical hedonist if
there ever was one, also develops an entire
gastrosophie that involves the gratification of all
of our 810 senses (again 810!), trumping the
common understanding that there are only five.
Likewise, food is a cosmic vision, a Òpsychedelic
gastronomy!Ó as the editor of the first Danish
translation exults.5
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf all this sounds far out, then consider
FourierÕs margin of error: all his calculi, he writes
in Theory of the Four Movements (1808), are
subject to the exception of a fraction of an eighth
or a ninth:
and his hatred of the English show the darker
sides of his thinking.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFourier cannot be taken seriously. This is
exactly the power of his text against any esprit de
sŽrieux. With his blatant inventions and
inconsistencies, his writings are ridiculous, too
much. Roland Barthes called FourierÕs science
Òovermuch,Ó and considered his work as a kind of
literary practice. ÒNever was a discourse
happier,Ó wrote Barthes, for it describes a new
social order articulated on excess,
bedazzlement, and, in FourierÕs own words, the
Òneed to protect everything we call vice.Ó7
Barthes writes with fascination on FourierÕs
Òvomiting of politicsÓ in a Òvast madness which
does not end, but which permutates.Ó8 As Adorno
summed it up, Òif it can be said about anybody,
then these lines apply to Fourier: Ôa fool leaves
the world, and it remains stupidÕÓ9 Benjamin,
more politely, took a Nietzschean angle: ÒFourier
is more of an inventor than a savant.Ó10
2. Love of Lesbians and the Sound of
Absolutely Positive Truth
FourierÕs happy discourse also relates to a
systematization and practical application of his
radical imagination. He was neither a mysticist
nor a reformist or a revolutionary. Contrary to his
reception by Marx and other socialist thinkers,
he did not consider himself a utopian. Harmony
does not demand work and sacrifice, but is
rather the inevitable outcome of scientificallyadjusted human behavior. His controversial
views on the permissive, innovative character of
sexual practices Ð including homosexual,
polygamous, extra-marital, manic, and
ÒomnigamousÓ Ð were thus a purely scientific
appreciation of one way of moving toward new
social structures. (Fourier himself was prone to
an ambivalent extra-mania he termed
ÒSapphienismeÓ whereby he was a lover and
protector of lesbians and promoted their
wellbeing. He assessed to be among about
26,400 companions worldwide with similar
ideas.)
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn this sense, the aim of science is simply to
harness Passional Attraction as a cosmic source
of energy and to bring mankind within the
ordered domain of Passional Gravitation. Thus,
FourierÕs socialism is not what ought to be (the
essence of Marxian socialism, according to
Marcuse), but what will be Ð naturally, rationally,
and without revolution Ð as soon as our passions
are realized socially; as soon as we are tuned in
correctly, as it were, to a social space that in
Fourier is reconfigured and proportioned
harmonically.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe optimism of Enlightenment
philosophers was often legitimized by utilitarian
application. Truth Ð that in Fourier is Òabsolutely
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The Familiest•re Godin was constructed between 1856-1859, by the industrial entrepreneur, Jean-Baptiste-AndrŽ Godin inspired by the ideas of Fourier and
Saint-Simon. As a social experiment, work facilities were linked to a communal settlement, equipped with all the necessary amenities: residential buildings,
a pool, cooperative stores, a garden, a nursery, schools and a theatre (the temple of the Familist•re community). This experiment lasted in cooperative form
until 1968.
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species.Ó13 He notes that, Òif everything is
connected in the system of the universe, there
must exist a means of communicating between
creatures of the other world and this.Ó This
means of communication is the Aromal Fluid, the
supersensible exhalation of the planets. It is an
exemplary vital matter: a single, all-pervasive,
imperceptible substance Ð a bit like capital in
our present cosmogony, we can say; a universal
middleman.
Engraving of A Perfumer's Dress.
e-flux journal #26 Ñ june 2011 Ê Lars Bang Larsen
Giraffe and Anti-Giraffe: Charles FourierÕs Artistic Thinking
positiveÓ (Blanchot) Ð was the practical task of
helping humanity to become humanity, through
the eradication of illness, poverty, ignorance, and
so forth. The Phalanstery thus provided the
ground for the commonsensical applicability of
FourierÕs argument. Moreover, utilitarianism
rejects the ranking of (moral) value according to
a priori criteria in favor of the equal validity of
each personÕs own search for happiness and
pleasure. Fourier, to be sure, accepts and
celebrates the subjective multi-directionality of
vanity, passion, and inclination. To him, one must
embrace the delights of contrast, competition,
and rivalry on the level of the individual and
social series: in Harmony, Industrial Armies roam
the world and compete in aesthetic battles to
build large-scale engineering projects, cook the
most delicious pie, or stage the most impressive
opera. Thus FourierÕs anti-conformist God
resides over a Combined Order whose permanent
social revelation consists in variety and
complexity Ð difference in age, fortune, ability,
temperament. In the 1960s, the hippies would
sum up such undogmatic tolerance with the
slogan Òdo your own thing.Ó Let the pleasure
principle rule. DonÕt moralize, donÕt pathologize.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course, Fourier also had a theory for the
history of the entire world. His cosmogony is a
theory of the Òages of happiness,Ó which explains
the progress and decay of civilization in
ascending and descending vibrations, together
comprising eighty thousand years and thirty-two
social metamorphoses, after which humankind
will cease to exist. The ascending and
descending vibrations serve to ÒpatternÓ
movements between different stages of
individual and historical being, corresponding to
the progression from youth to decrepitude in the
human life span. The musical analogy is
elaborated in the way Fourier organizes the
subjectÕs passions and senses as a keyboard
with thirty-two keys. Like the passions are a
keyboard, for example, so is the Sun surrounded
by a claviature of planets arranged in octaves;
thus social change on Earth will influence the
entire solar system and affect the planetary
orbits positively. This ties in FourierÕs theories
with the ancient Pythagorean and Renaissance
beliefs in an affinity between natural law and
divine law, between the harmony of the passions
and the harmony of the spheres.11
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn 1814, Fourier discovers the Aromal Fluid,
a medium for the great chain of being, a
connection between the Earth and the rest of the
universe.12 The Aromal Fluid (or Aromal
Movement) is a Òsystem for the distribution of
known or unknown aromas, which control men
and animals, form the seeds of winds and
epidemics, govern the sexual relations of the
planets and provide the seeds of created
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn FourierÕs cosmic order, the world is folded
in upon itself in analogies mirroring the
principles that constitute it (with octaves,
harmonies, planetary orbits, and so on). It has no
messianic horizon because it is held together by
divine, mathematical laws Ð geometrical
principles that contain parcels of all states of
being, including their respective polarities and
all ambivalent and transitional forms, and that
are only complete in the totality of their variety
and infinite multiplicity. Every moment in a
geometric time-space corresponds to myriad
events that are distributed across a plane
defined by cycles, scales, and symmetries.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the few remarks that he made on Fourier,
Maurice Blanchot deconstructs the status of
desire in the formerÕs system. To Blanchot, the
Òstrange giftÓ of Passional Attraction is a
Òpassion without desire.Ó14 Where desire is that
of an individual subject, of a sovereign ÒIÓ that
affirms the law that it destroys in the
consumption of a transgressive desire, a passion
without desire Ð measured, non-erotic, yet
obliging the entire universe to modify itself Ð
never coincides with pleasure, even if pleasure is
one of its moments. BlanchotÕs reading implies
that cosmic happiness goes beyond the
individual human subject: instead, Passional
Attraction becomes a tendency that rises into
the non-time of 80,000 years of ascending and
descending vibrations toward universal harmony
and sympathetic fusion within the given order of
the cosmic household.15 FourierÕs harmonial
vibration is the cosmic timbre of a higher pattern
to which the soul is already attuned.
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Fourier as a superior form of love, is an act of
principle. In DesantiÕs micropolitical turn of
phrase, the drop-outs of Togetherness have
found Òtheir universal love, a total tolerance of
minoritarian and singular tendencies.Ó19
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBy 1969, Togetherness suffers a meteoric
decline and is dissolved by its members. The
former communards choose social revolt as their
next endeavor, in factions of post-Proudhonism,
post-Marxism, post-Leninism, or ÒparaMaoism.Ó Even in its collapse, Fourierism
generates difference. Short-lived as it was, the
example of Togetherness during the Summer of
Love seems to refute BenjaminÕs claim that Òonly
in the summery middle of the nineteenth century,
only under its sun, can one conceive of FourierÕs
fantasy materialized.Ó20 Writing in 1969, Roland
Barthes predicted the decline of the Fourierist
commune,
Could we imagine a way of living that was, if
not revolutionary, at least unobstructed?
No one since Fourier has produced this
image: no figure has yet been able to
surmount and go beyond the militant and
the hippy. The militant continue to live like
a petty bourgeois, and the hippy like an
inverted bourgeois; between these two,
nothing. The political critique and the
cultural critique donÕt seem to be able to
coincide.21
e-flux journal #26 Ñ june 2011 Ê Lars Bang Larsen
Giraffe and Anti-Giraffe: Charles FourierÕs Artistic Thinking
3. Fourier as a Way of Life
FourierÕs vision for communal living, liberated
sexuality, and cosmic harmony resonated with
countercultural, ÒtribalÓ emancipation and
holistic utopian projects of the 1960s, such as
Buckminster FullerÕs Òspaceship earthÓ and
Martin Luther KingÕs Òbeloved community.Ó16
After his writings were republished in France in
1966Ð68, commentaries and new translations
sprang up across Europe and his work was
almost obligatorily referenced in critical writing
at the time, as well as and in architecture, with
the Phalanstery being an inspiration for Le
CorbusierÕs UnitŽ dÕhabitation (1947­Ð52). In art
and counterculture, Fourier's work had an at
least a spectral presence, as in ConstantÕs New
Babylon, the mandatory daily exchange of sex
partners in Otto MŸhlÕs Aktionsanalytische
Organisation, or in the name of the Danish
student and youth organization Det Ny Samfund
(ÒNew SocietyÓ). In general, FourierÕs conjoint
theorization of labor and love dovetailed with the
many post-World War II attempts at thinking
Marx and Freud together.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAs FourierÕs teachings had been
sporadically realized in communes in Europe,
North America, and South America in the
nineteenth century, so was there also the
psychedelic Phalanstery. As members of the San
Francisco commune Togetherness explained to
Dominique Desanti in the late sixties, ÒWe are
Fourierists.Ó17 Asked whether they have actually
read Fourier they reply, ÒweÕve been told.Ó Theirs
is ÒUn Fourier par ou•-dire,Ó infused with
elements of Gandhism, concocted in a mix of
memory and invention that in itself is quite
Fourierian. Still, the members of the commune
remain faithful to Fourierian pillars of faith such
as the inclusion of children in production, the
division of the working day into two-hour shifts,
and the integration of male and female tasks.
Visitors have told the members of Togetherness
that Fourier condoned the use of drugs as an
adjuvant or stimulant, and they sell the
handicraft of the commune in the Haight-Asbury
district: Òex-hippie-capital turned into
necropolis, where the bourgeois come to watch
the post-hippies, drugged to the point of drifting
away, voluntary onlookers, the foam of a broken
wave.Ó18 While FourierÕs nineteenth-century
followers tended to underplay or even censor his
emphasis on the unrestrained development of
desire, it seems that his resurgence in sixtiesÕ
collectivism was focused on exactly the
Dionysian aspects of his socialism. Accordingly,
Togetherness was built on the rule of love, and its
denizens embraced Passional Attraction in an
amour diffus that included lesbian and gay
relationships, and in which orgies, instituted by
Similarly, to Herbert Marcuse it is also close but
no cigar with Charles Fourier. In his Eros and
Civilization (1955) Marcuse notes that, ÒFourier
comes closer than any other utopian socialist to
elucidating the dependence of freedom on nonrepressive sublimation.Ó22 But the nature of
FourierÕs idea is based on the repressive
elements of Òa giant organization and
administration,Ó which for Marcuse risks
fascism, for the working communities of the
Phalanstery Òanticipate Ôstrength through joyÕ
rather than freedom, the beautification of mass
culture rather than its abolition.Ó To accuse
Fourier of aestheticizing politics seems to
rationalize his work through the historical
knowledge of a totalitarian modernity. In the
mid-twentieth century, however, it was no doubt
inevitable to comment on the fascist
connotations of the Phalanst•re. (Or maybe it
was simply a question of irreconcilable
temperaments between Marcuse, the wellintentioned utopianist schoolteacher and Fourier
the Òdelirious cashier,Ó as Flaubert called him.)
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAlso other post-World War II thinkers were
uncertain as to whether FourierÕs imaginative
intoxication could be reclaimed for critical
purposes. While his work was eagerly referenced,
it remained exotic if not intractable; thus
Max Ernst, Une semaine de bontŽ, 1936. Graphic novel.
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Kenneth White asks whether Fourierism is of
Òany interest to us in the present historical
conjecture, or whether it is to be placed, once
and for all, as a particularly grotesque item, for
dilettante admiration and curiosity, on the shelf
of political antiquities.Ó23 Fourier never quite fit
history, yet his happy discourse is a specter that
seems to trans-illuminate any given historical
moment as an x-ray of that which is not, but
exists anyway because it can be imagined.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFourier wasnÕt read only as a Òvomiting of
politics,Ó but also as a regurgitation of
psychoanalysis. His philosophy was in a sense
already anti-Oedipal, corresponding to Deleuze
and GuattariÕs assertion that desires donÕt
belong to the realm of the imaginary, and are
never transformed through desexualization or
sublimation. Once sexuality is conceived as a
force of production in its own right (the
unconscious as a worker), it escapes restriction
into narrow cells of family, couple, person,
object. ÒSexuality is everywhere,Ó Deleuze and
Guattari wrote, recalling FourierÕs Òvibrations
and flowsÓ to evoke how libidinal energy
proceeds directly to the entire social field:
thus God has reduced it to insignificance by
giving it an irregular gait which shakes up
and damages any burden it might be called
upon to bear. As a result we prefer to leave
it to inaction, just as nobody will employ a
truthful man, whose character runs counter
to all accepted customs and desires.25
For the prime evidence points to the fact
that desire does not take as its object
persons or things, but the entire
surroundings that it traverses, the
vibrations and flows of every sort to which
it is joined, introducing therein breaks and
captures Ð an always nomadic and migrant
desire, characterized first of all by its
ÒgigantismÓ: no one has shown this more
clearly than Charles Fourier.24
As a result, and as per Fourier, Òwe always make
love with worldsÓ Ð which is, in fact, a good
definition of artistic thinking: to make love with
worlds Ð nothing less.
4. Giraffe, Reindeer, Dog
Planetary lovemaking makes us recognize
strange signs in civilization. According to Fourier,
the hieroglyph of truth is the giraffe:
The hieroglyph of truth in the animal
kingdom is the giraffe. Since the
characteristic of truth is to surmount error,
the animal that represents it must be able
to raise his head higher than all the others:
this the giraffe can do, as it browses on
branches 18 feet above the ground. It is, in
the words of one ancient author, Òa most
fine animal, gentle and agreeable to the
eye.Ó Truth is also most fine, but as it is
incapable of harmonizing with our customs,
its hieroglyph, the giraffe, must be
incapable of helping humans in their work;
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Franscisco Goya, The Witches' Sabbath, 1797-98. Oil on canvas.
Fourier reasons that just like truth is only
beautiful when it is inactive, so the giraffe is only
admirable when it is at rest. With this analogy he
proves that God created nothing without a
purpose Ð even the giraffe, which is supremely
useless. Thus, if one wishes to know what
purposes it will serve in societies other than
Civilization, one can study this problem in the
Òcounter-giraffe,Ó the reindeer. A creature that
only lives in hostile climates, the reindeer is Òan
animal which provides us with every service
imaginable: you will see that God has excluded it
from those social climates, from which truth will
also be excluded for as long as Civilization
lasts.Ó26 Fourier continues,
And when the societary order has enabled
us to become adept at the use of truth and
FourierÕs delirious parable will get us nowhere
near objectivity and consensus, yet it in its
irreducibility it circumscribes the absence of
truth. As we wait for this fantastic animal Ð the
anti-giraffe Ð to arrive, we can delectate its
profoundly aesthetic incongruence with all that
exists, its devastating power of counteractualization. If one wants a social aesthetic,
then this is it: all that FourierÕs philosophical
system talks about is the social, yet it can never
be socialized, never become one with society,
never become operational or ameliorative. Power
will never be able to use Fourier to heal the
miseries it has created. More than 200 years
after Fourier wrote his first book, at a time when
art is encroached by economy like never before,
this fact alone seems more important than ever
for the thinking and the making of art.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf we were to consider FourierÕs text a
blueprint for a new life-world then we will,
melancholically, get sucked back into the Real
that we can never master. Just think of the
personal misery of Charles, who each day at
noon waited for the patron who would sponsor
the realization of one of his Phalansteries, but
who never arrived; who dreamt of gastronomic
orgies but ate bad food his entire life; who was
found dead kneeling by his bed in his old frockcoatÉ Instead, if contemporary life appeals to
none of your 810 senses, one can take a hit of the
perverse systematic of FourierÕs Harmony to
invigorate sensing and speculation. ÒIt was all in
the mind,Ó said Marx of Fourier Ð but so is any
other theory, institution, and discourse that
reproduces the world. Most of all, reading
Fourier today is a perfect anachrony to capitalÕs
pre-emption of the future through calculated
responses in the present. Even (or especially)
capital will never catch up to this. It is a text that
tops off all the absurdities that we are being
served, by economy and politics alike, revealing
them not as false and theatrical, but as gnomic
and forlorn Ð incapable of touching FourierÕs
divine and unapologetic bullshit that makes you
defenseless, lifts you up and sets you free.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAdorno and Horkheimer write that in the
culture industry, imagination goes to the dogs.
Not so in Fourier. Here we always make love with
worlds.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×
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e-flux journal #26 Ñ june 2011 Ê Lars Bang Larsen
Giraffe and Anti-Giraffe: Charles FourierÕs Artistic Thinking
the virtues which are excluded from our
lives at present, a new creation will provide
us, in the anti-giraffe, with a great and
magnificent servant whose qualities will far
surpass the good qualities of the reindeer,
which so excites our envy and arouses our
anger at nature for having deprived us of
it.27
Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian and curator based
in Barcelona and Copenhagen. He has co-curated
group exhibitions such as Pyramids of Mars
(Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2000, a.o.), Populism
(Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2005, a.o.), La
insurrecci—n invisible de un mill—n de mentes (Sala
rekalde, Bilbao 2005), and A History of Irritated
Material (Raven Row, London 2010). His books include
Sture Johannesson (NIFCA / Lukas & Sternberg 2002)
and a monograph about Palle NielsenÕs utopian
adventure playground at Moderna Museet in
Stockholm,The Model. A Model for a Qualitative
Society, 1968 (MACBA 2010). The series of pamphlets
Kunst er Norm, Organisationsformer and Spredt v¾ren
(ÕArt is NormÕ, ÕForms of OrganisationÕ and ÕDissipated
beingÕ, published by the Art Academy of Jutland),
discusses the experience economy as a mutation in
artÕs DNA towards a new normativisation of art. He is
currently collaborating with Maria Lind for a project at
Tensta Konsthall titled The New Model, and with the
Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art for an
exhibition that deals with the genealogy of Conceptual
Art.Ê
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3
In Fourier there are twelve
passions common to everybody.
The five ÒluxuriousÓ passions
(that correspond to the five
senses) tend toward luxury,
pleasure, the formation of
groups and affective ties. The
four cardinal, affective passions
Ð friendship, ambition, love and
ÒfamilismÓ Ð concern
relationships with others; and
finally the three Òdistributive or
mechanizingÓ passions, the
Cabalist, the Butterfly, and the
Composite that have to do with
calculation and organization of
pleasurable work. The twelve
passions combine in a thirteenth
super-passion, Unityism, that
rules the Destinies for all time.
This is the Òinclination of the
individual to harmonize
everything around him and of the
whole human race É it is a
boundless philanthropy, a
universal well-being,Ó the
comprehension of the whole.
Charles Fourier, The Theory of
the Four Movements, eds. Gareth
Stedman Jones, Ian Patterson
(1808; Cambridge: Cambridge
University press, 1996), 81.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4
Walter Benjamin, ÒFourier,Ó
(c.1940), in Das Passagen-Werk
(Berlin: Suhrkamp), 792.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5
Michael Helm, introduction to
Stammef¾llesskabet by Charles
Fourier (Copenhagen: Borgen,
1972).
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6
Fourier, Theory of the Four
Movements, 34.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7
Fourier, Theory of the Four
Movements, 72. To Barthes,
Fourier is a Òlogothet,Ó the
founder of a new discourse
whose social inventions are
facts of writing. Roland Barthes,
Sade Fourier Loyola (Paris:
ƒditions du Seuil, 1971), 83.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8
Barthes, Sade Fourier Loyola, 88.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9
Theodor Adorno, forward to
Theorie der vier Bewegungen und
der allgemeinen Bestimmungen
by Charles Fourier, trans.
Gertrud von Holzhausen
(Frankfurt am Main: EuropŠische
Verlagsanstalt, 1966), 5.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10
Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk,
775.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11
For Joscelyn Godwin, FourierÕs
Ibid., 210.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ19
Ibid., 209.
10/10
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2
AndrŽ Breton: Selections, ed.
Mark Polizzotti (Berkeley:
University of California Press,
2003), 32.
cosmogony is Òas traditional as
could beÓ viewed from the point
of a Pythagorean tradition. See
Joscelyn Godwin, The Harmony
of the Spheres. A Sourcebook of
the Pythagorean Tradition in
Music (Rochester, VA: Inner
Traditions, 1993), 357. Unlike
Godwin, Benjamin holds that
ÒMan muss sich klar machen,
dass Fouriers Harmonien auf
keiner der Ÿberkommenen
Zahlenmysterien beruhren, wie
dem pythagorŠischen oder dem
keplerschen. Sie sind gar aus
ihm selber herausgesponnen
und sie geben der Harmonie
etwas Unnahbares und
Bewahrtes: sie umgeben die
harmoniens gleichsam mit
Stacheldraht. Le bonheur du
phalanst•re es tun bonheur
barbelŽ.Ó (Das Passagen-Werk,
785Ð6).
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ22
This and the following quotes
from Herbert Marcuse, Eros and
Civilization (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1956), 217Ð218.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ12
FourierÕs Theory of The Four
Movements covers the social (or
passionate), animal (or
instinctive), organic and material
movements.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ23
White, Introduction to Ode to
Charles Fourier by AndrŽ Breton
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ24
Gilles Deleuze and FŽlix
Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983), 293 and
292.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ13
Fourier, Theory of The Four
Movements, 16.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ14
Maurice Blanchot, ÒEn guise
dÕintroductionÓ Topique, 4Ð5
(October, 1970), 8.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ15
Barthes talks about the
domesticity of utopia: ÒThe area
of need is Politics, the area of
Desire is what Fourier calls
Domestics. Fourier has chosen
Domestics over Politics, he has
constructed a domestic utopia
(but can a utopia be otherwise?
Can a utopia be political? IsnÕt
politics: every language less one,
that of Desire? É Politics is what
forecloses desire, save to
achieve it in the form of
neurosis: political neurosis or,
more exactly: the neurosis of
politicizing.Ó Barthes, Sade
Fourier Loyola, 85.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ16
Linda Sargent Wood discusses
holistic world views in the
postwar era and how their
influence peaked in the sixties;
apart from Fuller and King, she
discusses Rachel Carson,
Teilhard de Chardin, and the
Esalen Institute. Linda Sargent
Wood, A More Perfect Union.
Holistic World Views and the
Transformation of American
Culture after World War II (New
York: Oxford University Press,
2010).
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ17
ÒEx-capitale hippie devenue
nŽcropole oœ les bourgeois
viennent contempler des posthippies, droguŽs ‡ la dŽrive,
figurants volontaires, Žcume
dÕune vague brisŽeÓ Dominique
Desanti, ÒSan Francisco: Des
hippies pour Fourier,Ó Topique,
4Ð5 (October, 1970), 209.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ18
ÒLeur Love universel, une
tolerance totale des tendances
minoritaires et des singularitŽsÓ
06.14.11 / 18:11:11 EDT
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ20
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades
Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann,
trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin
McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1999), 638.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ21
Roland Barthes, ÒA Case of
Cultural Criticism,Ó in The
Language of Fashion, trans. Andy
Stafford, ed. Michael Carter
(Oxford: Berg, 2006), 113.Ê
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ25
Fourier, Theory of The Four
Movements, 283.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ26
Ibid., 284.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ27
Ibid., 284.
e-flux journal #26 Ñ june 2011 Ê Lars Bang Larsen
Giraffe and Anti-Giraffe: Charles FourierÕs Artistic Thinking
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1
Marx quoted from Kenneth
White, Introduction to Ode to
Charles Fourier by AndrŽ Breton,
trans. Kenneth White (London:
Cape Goliard/Grossman, 1969).